Julia Lipscombe: How hard should parents push young athletes?

A couple of weeks ago, Nike released a new Serena Williams commercial. It features young Serena, hitting balls with her dad and coach, Richard Williams, interwoven with scenes from her sensational, 23-major-title-winning career.

“This is you at the U.S. Open,” he tells young Serena.

Man, it’s powerful. Sucker for sports — women’s sports, especially — that I am, I watched it over and over and over.

What Richard Williams did with his girls is unprecedented. The dedication and commitment it would have taken from the entire Williams family to get Serena and Venus to where they are today? That blows my mind. Especially now that I have my own kids in sport.

Because behind most athletic prodigies, there is a parent who pushed them, hard. For better or for worse.

Andre Agassi — who was coached by his dad — famously said he hated tennis. But it also made him fabulously wealthy and an international superstar. I guess only he knows if it was all worth it.

So as parents — how hard are we supposed to push?

Our kids are athletically gifted, no doubt. Their great-grandfather, Rollie Miles, came to Canada to play professional baseball only to be convinced to play pro football instead. He won three Grey Cups with the Edmonton Eskimos and is in the CFL Hall of Fame.

My husband got a full track-and-field scholarship to Martin Luther King Jr.’s alma mater, Morehouse College, where he went on to be a two-time NCAA champion high-jumper. He later travelled the world representing Canada in the sport.

I played most sports but especially excelled in swimming. If I stuck with it, I’m sure I could have been a scholarship athlete at a good U.S. college. But I wanted a well-rounded experience in high school, instead. I didn’t want to live at the pool. And my parents didn’t push me.

I sometimes wonder what would have happened if they did. But that just wasn’t in their nature. If I wanted to be at the pool 10 times a week, they would have driven me there. But I didn’t.

I tell people — half-joking — that I want my two-year-old, Indy, to be the next Roger Federer or Tiger Woods. But I know realistically what that would mean. Putting a club or a racket in his hands at age three. Dedicating him to one sport only at the age of six or seven.

And would I be doing it for him? Or would I be doing it for me? Some kids actually want to dedicate themselves day and night to a sport (I’m thinking of my hockey-obsessed nephews, here).

But others do it because they’re told to. Or they want to please their parents. The line between really loving something and thinking you love it because your parents want you to seems pretty blurry to me.

This fall is a busy one for my steps. Tripp’s doing competitive trampoline and tumbling six hours a week. That’s a lot for an eight-year-old.

This past summer our 10-year-old, Chile, played baseball for at least eight hours a week, sometimes more. There were tournaments on several weekends, and a fair share of travel.

Even splitting that between his mom and Jesse and I was a huge commitment. There were still a lot of evenings I was home with Indy while Jesse was at the baseball diamond (try running around a field with a toddler for three hours… it’s not so much fun).

The thing is, though, our kids love the sports they’re doing. And if and when they don’t, we’ll let them decide.

Of course, they’ll have to finish out their season (barring extreme circumstances). There’s value in completing what you started. But the pressure won’t come from us to keep going in a sport they don’t love.

I’m not sure how many people need therapy later in life for not making it to the pros, but I know too many folks who feel somewhat broken after an unhappy childhood.

We decide on a lot for our kids, and that’s the way it should be. So maybe I’m wrong — and maybe this is why neither Jesse or I feel like we reached our true athletic potential — but when it comes to sports, I’d rather err on the side of lenience, of letting them decide.

Even if it means Indy’s not the next Roger Federer.

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